Surrendur to the schwag

This post may be a little out there, so for anyone who just reads this to see how I am doing - I am doing fine, you are excused now. If you continue to read I can't assume any risks for how this may or may not affect you. Some of you may not be familiar with the term "schwag" (no intentional resemblance to the slight familiarity in consonants to the original last half of the last name of my sister in law). Well - along with Mr. Liver, we became familiar with this term after seeing a series of Phish shows in the Denver Red Rocks Ampitheater, about 10 years ago. The term is a reference to illegal drugs, and those of you who finish reading this may conclude I was on drugs when I wrote this, but in fact it has been a good two decades since marijuana has been any part of my regular lifestyle, and almost a decade since I have even touched it. For an actual definition, let's go to some highlights from our friendly online urban dictionary site:
schwag: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schwag

"adj. Term used to describe low grade marijuana. This type of marijuana is usually brown, seedy, dry. The term is also used by many pot heads to describe anything that is low grade.
noun. low grade marijuana
adj- Ewww this schwag ass weed tastes horrible and it didnt get me very high.
noun- I hate smoking schwag, but i cant get any dank right now so i guess i'll have to.
Poor quality brown marijuana. The cheapest variety available, the least potent. Also sometimes jokingly referred to as schwiggity-schwags or even schwaggles.
Schwag is the antithesis of kind
This schwag won't get me high, but I keep trying.
fucking shitty ass weed
this is fuckin schwag!"

In other words - schwag is the opposite of "kind" or "dank". Some people not familiar with the drug culture do not know that there are various grades and qualities, just as there are with wine, beer, or just about anything else that makes you feel temporarily good at the expense of your brain and body. But now that we are familiar with what it means, I will spend the rest of this post using the term in a metaphorical sense, and I did write a song about it a while back, but I will refrain from recording for the time being.

Let's start with the concept of wanting to get high to begin with. Why would someone want to do that? Well - for myself, speaking probably for others as well, I was in a mental rut at the time, kind of stuck, could not feel good naturally - and so I chose artificial means to do that. So when you want to get high, but you can't - to me schwag is a perfect term to capture that sense of being stuck in a rut, depressed, stale, flat, uninspired, down and out - you get the idea. Now that opposite state of feeling good - which can be accomplished by the dank or kind, I will to make things simple, refer to that elevated state as a term some of you may be familiar with - "cheese". So - to sum up - there are two essential states of existence, the flat, frustrated, uninspired down and out "schwag" and then that glowing state of happiness and inspiration that I have often shared with you here - "cheese". Now my experience with these states as well, is that unless they are in their extreme states as I experienced in my college days (even then, they lasted a long time but eventually faded, they are ultimately temporary. The Buddhists try to teach us that through meditation, we should not get too attached to either one of them, because neither one of them will last, so we should not get too attached to our fleeting emotions. There may be some who have transformed and meditated to the point that the scwhag like states are a thing of the past for them, but I think that most of us do experience them both.

As far as "cheese" goes - we need to experience it, at least some times. I don't think anyone of us choose to or want to be in a schwag like state forever, and when we get stuck in it for too long, some of us do desperate and destructive things in a desperate attempt to re-unite with the cheese. These include putting things in our body that are not good for us. I may be above drugs and alcohol now, as they both no longer interest me any more, but I struggle with my weight, eating things I should not, and at 205 and 5'11, I always seem to have a little friend above my waist that never quite goes away. Then there is the "natural cheese" that is less destructive - the inspiration of nature, our spiritual feelings, love of family and friends - and this can be beneficial, but like I said before - getting too attached can be a problem, because at some point the cheese and schwag go back to back, and where one is, the other may not be far away - kind of like the classic "ying and yang".

And now this brings me to the whole concept of romantic love. Nature really messes us up in my opinion. We are inherently programmed to want to mate, reproduce, and then raise our children, but then this little devil voice in our head tells us to stray outside and get some "fresh" cheese, so to speak. And our own western culture does not help us here, because as Robert Johnson states in his "We" book, we are a culture that believes in romantic love. And in my experience, romantic love is fleeting. No matter how much I love and adore my wife, I cannot stay in love with her to the extent of when I first met her. I would like to say we experience the same passion of our first days - and maybe at times it comes back, but ultimately, we are both 10 years older - and even though SHE may want passion all the time, I have a hard time keeping up with her (okay - you can apply the opposite rule to that one). So like the hundreds of millions of married people this has happened too, there were times when we were both drawn to members of the opposite sex outside of our marriage. Our culture tells us we should expect romance in our relationships, but unless we go from one relationship to another, which can be pretty lonely, than the reality is we have to live in an un-romantic relationship if we want it to last - hence the term "surrendur to the schwag".

Our own culture does not help us here. All the love songs, romance novels, all the cheesy influences of the American commerical realm tell us we should be in love, damn it. I happened to suffer through some Great American Country TV at the gym the other day (GAC of all things, abbreviated for a vulgar term - Jim Rome - Bill Clinton "gacked" Monica's dress). Even though I was spared the volume of having to actually listen to that crap, I could see the blond haired bimbo Barbee singing into the camera with longing looks in her eyes, followed by the perfectly handsome Kens doing the same thing - and I thought - no wonder we are so screwed up here. Even my favorite groups like the Beatles spent their first years writing about this (I'm in love with her and I feel fine) and it took the much less influential artists like Frank Zappa to point out how impossible this is in reality, in such unknown classics as "I have been in you". So many couples that are doing fine, but feeling that missing longing romance in their lives, fail to "surrendur to the schwag" and in that search for temporary elusive cheese, they blow the whole thing and become part of the staggering divorce numbers in this country. And I guess I am kind of old fashioned, because I believe that unless you are physically being abused (I guess emotional isn't great either), but if you are in a relationship with mutual respect - why screw it all up - especially if kids are involved?

So my answer here is to "surrendur to the schwag" and be grateful for what you have. You can still feel the romantic feelings when they come - and they don't even have to always be with the one you are with, but feel them without physically acting on them and responding to the call of the siren, so to speak. Because behind every tempting piece of cheese, a deeper schwag awaits - and after the passionate affair falls apart - as it ultimately and inevitably will, then you are left with even less than what you had before. And this applies to drugs too - that fleeting feeling of feeling good is replaced with a stupid head, hangover, crappy feeling - that can only be replaced by doing more of the same, and feeling even worse in the end. I once flirted with gambling and had the sense to back away from that too, but in the end that can destroy everything too as has been documented, and one of the complaints I have about the great state of Nevada which to a certain extent sells its soul to the devil by being acquainted with such a destructive force.

I know some of us get caught up in the "grand pecking order" and fall trap to the cheese of material possessions, what Buddhists refer to as "samsara" which even has a resemblance to the scwhag term. And I know money is essential to survival, but I still think no matter how big your house is, no matter how much you show it off and the implied size of your genital organs the size symbolizes, that ultimately our material possessions can only do so much for us, and as the analogy goes in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, it is like reaching for a glass of water and drinking sand in return. Any physical item is just a block of material, and the thrill and rush of one wears off, and only more purchases of temporary fleeting satisfaction can live up to that same rush. Part of my job involves visiting many million dollar homes, and I always seem to sense that no matter how elaborate, grand and definite the cheese is on the outside, that the same schwag pokes through and equalizes every home, from a run down one bedroom apartment to a million dollar two story home.

So in short, my surrendur to the "schwag" philosophy is this - as long we have what we physically need to survive, we should be grateful for what we have, for the companions we do have, whoever they are, even if they don't give us that elusive thrill of cheese. The grass is not greener on the other side of the hill, and we are meant to be exactly where we are standing, and nowhere else. Our paths bring us to every portion of the trail for a reason, and even if they bring us to some depressing shwag like states, that the best way to get to the other side is to embrace them, and let the natural cheese embrace us when it does, and do it in a healthy, not destructive way. This is your friendly "Captain Cheese" signing off for now.